Four days after two Canadian residents were arrested in connection to an alleged terrorist plot to derail a train on Canadian soil, disturbing details of their checkered pasts continue to be revealed – including revelations that Canada tried to deport one of the men nine years ago.

Raed Jaser and Chiheb Esseghaier were arrested on Monday and have made primary court appearances, but remain in custody.

Esseghaier told a judge on Wednesday that Canada’s criminal code was not a “holy book” and therefore not perfect.

Sources told the Toronto Star that Esseghaier met with an al-Qaeda operative before moving to Canada in 2009, under a student visa. Jaser, meantime, has been living in Canada for 20 years after his family moved here as refugees.

Jaser is a Palestinian who was born in the United Arab Emirates and never received citizenship in that country. He and his family were considered “stateless,” and moved first to Germany and later Canada, where they sought refugee status.

Jaser was arrested in 2004 for allegedly working illegally under various aliases, but could not be deported because he belonged to no country.

“I am not a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, I can’t be,” the Post quotes him as telling the Immigration and Refugee Board in 2004, based on a transcript. “I am a Palestinian by blood, that does not give me any rights whatsoever in my place of birth.”

The Canadian Council of Refugees says there are some 15 million stateless people in the world, and considered displaced Palestinians one of the largest groups.

Palestinians represent the largest stateless community in the world: more than half of the eight million or so Palestinians are considered to be de jure stateless persons. Partly because they are stateless, Palestinian refugees are treated more harshly than other refugees. For example, Palestinians recently forced out of Iraq have not been admitted into Syria but instead are trapped in dangerous and desolate camps on the border. Despite a special appeal by the United Nations, few countries have stepped forward to offer them resettlement.

The Post’s report suggests Jaser had remained in a state of “long-term limbo” until he received permanent citizenship. He was denied citizenship based in part on a criminal history.

This of course says nothing about the guilt or innocence of either suspect. Just more bizarre details in an increasingly bizarre story.

TORONTO/MONTREAL (Reuters) – Two men charged with an alleged al Qaeda-backed plot to derail a Canadian passenger train made their first court appearances on Tuesday, and the lawyer for one said his client would fight the charges vigorously.

Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto and Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montrealface charges that include conspiring with each other “to murder unknown persons … for the benefit of, at the direction of, or in association with a terrorist group.”

They were arrested on Monday in separate raids after what police said was a joint Canada-U.S. investigation that started in the middle of last year after a tip from a member of the Muslim community.

Officers detained Jaser at his home, a semi-detached house in a north Toronto neighborhood, and arrested Esseghaier at a McDonald’s restaurant at Montreal’s main train station.

Canadian police said the plot involved a passenger train route in the Toronto area, and that there had been no immediate threat to rail passengers or to the public.

U.S. officials said that the suspects were believed to have worked on a plan involving blowing up a trestle on the Canadian side of the border as the Maple Leaf, Amtrak’s daily connection between Toronto and New York, passed over it.

They said investigators on both sides of the border were trying to establish if the suspects had associates in the United States, especially in New York City. One source said Esseghaier, in particular, was believed to have made several trips to the United States. CBC Television said Canadian police had tracked him for a year, including on a visit to a conference in Mexico.

IN CUSTODY

Jaser, heavily bearded and wearing a black cap, was remanded in custody after a brief hearing in Toronto. Media were barred from giving details of Jaser’s hearing under a publication ban requested by his lawyer.

“He denies the allegations and he will vigorously defend them,” said the lawyer, John Norris, who has represented Canadian Guantanamo detainee Omar Khadr, as well as Asad Ansari, one of a group of Toronto-area men charged in 2006 with planning attacks on Canadian targets.

Norris would not disclose Jaser’s nationality, saying the publication ban precluded discussing Jaser’s personal circumstances. He said Jaser has been a resident of Canada for 20 years.

Norris questioned the timing of the arrests, given a statement by police that the suspects posed no imminent threat. He noted that the arrest coincided with debate in Canada over a vote that would revive parts of the anti-terrorism act, which is supported by the Conservative government.

“The timing of the arrest is a bit of a mystery,” he said.

DENYING THE CHARGES

Outside the courtroom, a middle-aged man and a woman in a cream-colored hijab identified themselves as members of Jaser’s family, but would not answer questions.

With them were two younger men, and two women in full black niqab face veils, who fled when confronted with a throng of reporters, photographers and television crews.

Neighbors of Jaser told Reuters that he mostly kept to himself and attended a Masjid al-Faisal, a mosque in a refashioned house a short walk from his home.

“He was a normal attendee. If he’s coming he says ‘salaam’ to us and we say ‘salaam’ to him. Nothing more special, nothing more unusual, nothing more abnormal,” said Rana Khan, a congregant at the mosque. His alleged involvement in a plot was “a very, very shocking news for all of us over here.”

Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born doctoral student at a Montreal-area university, was flown to Toronto on Monday, but was quickly returned to Montreal to meet a legal requirement that he appear in a Quebec court within 24 hours of his arrest.

Bearded and bespectacled and wearing a shabby blue-and-black winter jacket, handcuffs and leg shackles, he told the judge there that conclusions had been drawn from facts and words “that are only appearances.”

At the hearing he was remanded in custody, and federal prosecutor Richard Roy said he expected Esseghaier to be flown back to Toronto later on Tuesday for a court appearance there.

Esseghaier represented himself at the hearing, which was not covered by a publication ban.

Canadian authorities have linked the two men to al Qaeda factions in Iran. But they said there was no indication of Iranian state-sponsorship of the plan, which police described as the first known al Qaeda-backed plot on Canadian soil.

DEATHS OR INJURIES FORESEEN

“Had this plot been carried out, it would have resulted in innocent people being killed or seriously injured,” Royal Canadian Mounted Police official James Malizia said on Monday.

Iran had some senior al Qaeda figures under a form of house arrest in the years following the September 11, 2001, attacks, but there has been little to no evidence to date of joint attempts to execute violence against the West.

However, a U.S. government source said Iran is home to a little-known network of alleged al Qaeda fixers and “facilitators” based in the city of Zahedan, very close to Iran’s borders with both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Iran reacted angrily to being tied to the arrests. Canada last year severed diplomatic ties over what it said was Iran’s support for terrorist groups, as well as its nuclear programmed and its hostility towards Israel.

“No shred of evidence regarding those who’ve been arrested and stand accused has been provided,” Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said, according to the Mehr news agency.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp and Mark Hosenball; Writing by Cameron French; Editing by Janet Guttsman and David Storey)

(This story is refiled to exclude ‘with each other’ from quotation marks in second paragraph)

Suspected received orders and got guidance from al-Qaeda leader in Iran

Planned to target New York-bound trains in Toronto

May have scouted targets in New York

Canadian security forces have thwarted an al-Qaeda-backed terrorist plot to derail a passenger train from New York City as it crossed the Niagara River, just a few miles from Niagara Falls.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police today arrested Chiheb Esseghaier, 30, of Montreal, and Raed Jaser, 35, of Toronto, who they say took orders and received guidance from al-Qaeda operatives in Iran.

Officials reportedly watched the men for more than a year and say the plot never got past the planning stages. Canadian counter-terrorism officials say the public was never in danger, the the men would have carried out the attack if they had not been stopped.

Neither of the men are Canadian citizens, but security officials wouldn’t say where they were from or why they were in the country.

Targeted: Authorities say two accused terrorists conducted surveillance on Via Rail trains, Canada’s national passenger rail service, with the intention of derailing one of the trains

A U.S. law enforcement source told Reuters the alleged plot was not linked with last week’s Boston Marathon bombings.

The two men allegedly planned to derail an Amtrak or Canadian Via train as it crossed over the Whirpool Rapids Bridge from the United States into Canada.

The historic arch bridge spans the Niagara River 225 feet above the water.

A source told Reuters that the Amtrak Maple Leaf line, which runs from New York City to Toronto, was targeted. Canadian officials declined to confirm which trains were targeted.

‘Today’s arrests demonstrate that terrorism continues to be a real threat to Canada,’ Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told reporters in Ottawa.

‘Canada will not tolerate terrorist activity and we will not be used as a safe haven for terrorists or those who support terrorist activities.’

Perhaps the biggest surprise to come out of the announcement is that the orders were given by al-Qaeda leaders in Iran.

Iran, a Shi’a-majority country, is a strange ally for the fiercely Sunni Muslim terrorist group.

CNN reported last month that the few surviving members of Osama bin Laden‘s inner circle currently reside in Iran.

Some of bin Laden’s family are said to be under house arrest in Tehran. Others – including top advisers – live in the ski resort city of Chalus on the Caspian Sea.

Canadian authorities, though, were careful to make clear that this was not an instance of state-sponsored terrorism.

The arrests follow not only the Boston bombings but revelations that Canadians took part in an attack by militants on a gas plant in Algeria in January.

It also recalls the arrests in 2006 of a group of more than a dozen Toronto-area men accused of planning to plant bombs at various Canadian targets. Eleven men were eventually convicted of taking part on the plot.

Announcement: Authorities gave few details about the plot, but said the public was never in danger

French police on Tuesday arrested two men on suspicion of complicity with Islamist terrorist Mohamed Merah, who killed seven people, including a rabbi and three Jewish school children, in the city of Toulouse a year ago.

An anti-terror unit arrested the pair in Toulouse, police officials said, without providing details on their identity, the AFP news agency reported.

Two men aged 19 and 22 were arrested a month earlier on suspicion of assisting Merah, aged 23, who was shot dead in a police siege after killing a rabbi, three Jewish children and three paratroopers outside the Otzar HaTorah Jewish day school.

They were released without charge, as were three others arrested before them, according to AFP.

French police doubt that Merah, a self-described Al-Qaeda sympathizer, could have acted alone, but the only individual charged thus far with complicity in the crime has been his brother Abdelkader.

France has seen a 45 percent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents since the Toulouse shootings.